Family Ties

His pre-dawn paper route gives him a little extra cash to add a few
personal touches to his school job, such as taking troubled students to
lunch. It also affords him the quiet time he needs to compose himself
for the trying day ahead. Clemons spends most days helping students in
one of the poorest parts of the city survive brushes with violence,
drugs, and despair.

"I've buried half a dozen kids in the last two years, most of them
shot senselessly in the streets,'' he says. "What we have to provide in
our center is hope.''

Going the extra mile to provide that hope has become a hallmark of
centers like Clemons' throughout Kentucky. These centers, in fact, have
become one of the most prized components of the 1990 Kentucky Education
Reform Act. "Legislators tell us we're the part of KERA that you can
reach out and touch,'' says Angela Boone-Pillow, coordinator of the
family-resource center at Louisville's Cochran Elementary School.

When a school-finance suit forced Kentucky to revamp its education
system from top to bottom, state officials recognized that their best
efforts to retool schools would falter if children's lives were
tattered by deprivation and despair. So they mandated that all schools
where at least 20 percent of the students qualify for free meals
establish special centers to help children and their families. The
centers' staff members serve as trouble-shooters for schools, making
sure families have reliable child care, providing after-school
programs, and arranging health services, among other things.

The facilities--called family-resource centers in elementary schools
and youth-services centers in middle and high schools--are much more
modestly financed than many other models that have drawn national
acclaim. The state is spending $32 million on the program this year;
grants to individual centers range from $10,000 to $90,000. But like
Clemons, many center coordinators supplement that money through
extensive fund raising.

Researchers say it is difficult to gauge how much impact the centers
will have on achievement and graduation rates in the state or how
deeply they can alter the way schools operate, teachers teach, and
parents take part in their children's schooling. But early data suggest
they are already helping families, brightening children's attitudes,
and lightening the burdens of teachers.

Bette Hughes, coordinator of a youth-services center in its first
year at Louisville's Stuart Middle School, helped boost attendance
rates in the early weeks of school by arranging for a doctor to provide
much-needed immunizations. She also helped set up a program to station
therapists at the school and has launched parenting classes. She is
proud of such feats as helping a mother who was a recovering alcoholic
find food and housing and enroll in a job-placement program that landed
her a good job.

But Hughes is hard-nosed about setting limits with families who do
not take steps to help themselves. "I'm not going to 'enable' them,''
she says. As a veteran teacher who frequently made home visits and as a
foster parent, Hughes knows the community well. But because the area
has many homeless families, she has had to master the intricacies of
housing aid, something for which she had no training. "My biggest
challenge is having enough time for families,'' says Hughes, who works
10 to 12 hours a day and carries a pager. "If a family is evicted, I
want them to be able to contact me.''

The idea of basing such centers in and around schools is not new.
But no state has taken the concept and run with it as systematically as
Kentucky. In the four years since the program's enactment, the state
has provided money for some 478 centers serving 782 schools. If the
legislature comes through with the funding to serve all eligible
schools, the program could reach about 1,100 schools by 1997.

The original deadline for having the program fully in place was this
year, but legislators underestimated the demand for centers and did not
allot enough money. What's more, although the facilities are offering
hope to legions of children who had little before, they have also
highlighted just how profound their needs are and that many more
require assistance. "We could be here 24 hours a day,'' Clemons says,
"and I'm not sure we shouldn't be.''

What most impresses observers is how schools have tailored the
centers to their specific needs. Housed in classrooms, spare offices,
and mobile units, no two look or operate exactly alike. "There might be
variation,'' says John Kalafat, a professor of psychology at Spalding
University in Louisville who has done in-depth studies of 25 centers
for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, "but every one of them is delivering
an awful lot for the money.''

Most of those involved with the centers believe the state was right
to run with the idea. "If you wait until you are right on the target,
sometimes you wait too long,'' explains Ronnie Dunn, executive adviser
to the commissioner of the state department of health services.

After much debate, the legislature placed control of funding and
oversight for the centers into the hands of the state human resources
department but designated the education department as a key partner.
Because the centers are the only part of the state reform law not in
the hands of the education department, "it's been a constant struggle
to make sure this program is integrated into all the other aspects of
reform,'' says Bill Scott, a former state education official who worked
on the project.

The first centers faced resistance from some conservative groups and
school administrators who saw them as examples of government meddling
in local affairs. But policymakers won over many of the early critics
by essentially turning the centers over to local players. "We wanted
these to be very rooted in the particular school and not
state-capital-driven,'' says David Karem, a state senator from
Louisville who helped draft the bill that created the centers.

Still, under the law, the centers must provide--or arrange to
provide--a variety of core services, such as child care, educational
programs for parents, support and training for day-care providers,
health and social services, youth-job programs, and drug treatment.

Each facility can meet these needs as it sees fit, guided by a
locally selected advisory council made up of parents, school employees,
students, and representatives of local agencies. That freedom gives
local boards the latitude to pick center directors who possess good
"people'' skills rather than specific professional credentials. Many,
like Clemons, are social workers. But others are teachers, college
counselors, and housewives. One is an ex-chief of police, and another
is a former coal miner.

Although most program supporters say flexibility is preferable to
overregulation, there have been trade-offs. Some directors, for
example, say they have been stymied by problems beyond their control,
such as the lack of decent housing or mental-health services in their
communities.

State human services and education officials work together to
support clusters of centers. But as the number of centers grows, site
visits have become less frequent and personal contacts rarer. The newer
groups have missed out on opportunities their predecessors had, such as
intensive training. Annual conferences that once were intimate
gatherings have grown so large that only three facilities in the state
are big enough to house them.

But there is also strength in numbers. Center coordinators have
formed associations, and newer directors rely heavily on their more
experienced colleagues. At many sites, coordinators are constantly on
the phone comparing notes with others. "Probably my biggest support is
the other centers,'' says Charlos Thompson, the new coordinator of a
center that serves an elementary school and a high school in Jefferson
County, "especially the ones that have been around for two or three
years.''

Some directors have also had to battle the perception that the
program is only for poor people, even though the centers are meant to
serve their entire school communities. Many try to attract parents by
offering a range of activities, including dances, outings, and classes.
Some veteran directors say those strategies have helped make parents
comfortable in schools and have encouraged them to participate and
volunteer. But others--especially newer ones--say involving parents is
still a struggle. "One of the major problems we're having is parent
apathy,'' says Laura Lewis, coordinator of the Henry County Family
Resource Center.

For many teachers, the centers have been something of a boon. They
have freed teachers from a number of mundane chores--such as tracking
down shoes or coats for children or making extensive home
visits--enabling them to focus more of their time and energy on
academics.

Teachers and principals talk freely about how much they rely on the
center coordinators to intervene with parents. But even more, they say,
the coordinators have enhanced their school's relations with parents.
According to Sonya Unseld, a teacher at Cochran Elementary, the school
center draws parents into the school, increasing her chances of running
into them. "Any time they are in the building,'' she says, "they have
more contact with me.''

But some people have suggested that the facilities actually serve as
a buffer between parents and teachers, that they encourage teachers to
disconnect too much. A number of center coordinators, for example, say
teachers rely on them too heavily to be the go-between on discipline
problems. But they also point out that the program has given teachers a
better appreciation of what their students are up against. "It has made
teachers more receptive to what is going on with the child,'' says
Boone-Pillow of Cochran, "and we're able to identify problems and get
families in quicker.''

Although most cannot pinpoint changes in an entire classroom or
school, researchers and teachers say children served by the centers are
more motivated than before to come to school, do their work, and get
along with their peers. That is clearly the case at Fairdale, where
Clemons is a popular figure in the hallways. Students at the school
flock to his office, some seeking help, others just to touch base.

Says Pam Rowan, a Title I reading teacher at Fairdale: "They feel
like there's someone here to help them immediately when they're at the
most impossible moment.''

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